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"Also considered safer"? The article is interesting and the solution great but saying it is safer because Rust is misleading. I wrote a Rust milter for Postfix

"Also considered safer"? The article is interesting and the solution great but saying it is safer because Rust is misleading. I wrote a Rust milter for Postfix incorrectly and although it didn't crash as such, it completely didn't work because data was coming into it from outside. i.e. it is still possible to write broken code in Rust. I've personally never considered nginx unsafe either but tbh, I am not exactly an nginx guru on the cutting edge of performance or load.

bad416f1f5a2 4y ago
> The article is interesting and the solution great but saying it is safer because Rust is misleading. Using Rust (without unsafe) precludes memory management bugs being turned into exploits. That closes an entire category of attack. Sure, “safety” can be defined along different axes, but Rust handles one entirely. How does that not make it safer than using a memory unsafe language?
- allendoerfer 4y ago
  > How does that not make it safer than using a memory unsafe language? It was never compared to using a memory unsafe language. It was compared to a wildly used and battle-tested open source software.
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    Nginx is written in C which is probably where the comparison is coming from.
  - pornel 4y ago
    Cloudflare uses a custom fork of nginx, with custom extensions, Lua FFI, and improved HTTP/2 and caching modules. So it is a comparison to development of in-house C.
sophacles 4y ago
People die wearing seatbelts. They are still safer than not wearing seatbelts.
pornel 4y ago
They've said "safer", not "100% foolproof in every circumstance, no exceptions".
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Has anyone ever claimed that if it compiled and ran in rust that it was logically correct? I've never seen anyone claim that and would call anyone who did an idiot. People do say it will tend to have fewer memory and programming errors out of the chute than c or c++ though given similarly experienced programmer because the compiler is much stricter.

bad416f1f5a2 4y ago

> The article is interesting and the solution great but saying it is safer because Rust is misleading. Using Rust (without unsafe) precludes memory management bugs being turned into exploits. That closes an entire category of attack. Sure, “safety” can be defined along different axes, but Rust handles one entirely. How does that not make it safer than using a memory unsafe language?

allendoerfer 4y ago
> How does that not make it safer than using a memory unsafe language? It was never compared to using a memory unsafe language. It was compared to a wildly used and battle-tested open source software.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  Nginx is written in C which is probably where the comparison is coming from.
- pornel 4y ago
  Cloudflare uses a custom fork of nginx, with custom extensions, Lua FFI, and improved HTTP/2 and caching modules. So it is a comparison to development of in-house C.

sophacles 4y ago

People die wearing seatbelts. They are still safer than not wearing seatbelts.

pornel 4y ago

They've said "safer", not "100% foolproof in every circumstance, no exceptions".

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Has anyone ever claimed that if it compiled and ran in rust that it was logically correct? I've never seen anyone claim that and would call anyone who did an idiot. People do say it will tend to have fewer memory and programming errors out of the chute than c or c++ though given similarly experienced programmer because the compiler is much stricter.